ARCHS’ effort to support after school programs extends well beyond the school year and even outside of the after school site. This summer ARCHS supported two major programs, one at St. Frances Cabrini facilitated by Provident Inc., and a second at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ facilitated by Neighborhood Houses. These programs provide a large variety of educational activities for youth, ranging from disguised academic lessons to week long camping trips.

St. Frances Cabrini

This summer at St. Frances Cabrini, one of their youth’s main activities was maintaining a local garden. On an early June morning, they had two primary tasks; water the garden and pick lettuce and basil. After unlocking their tool shed, the kids lugged around repurposed detergent jugs, filled to the brim with water, stopping at ever plant bed to water the plants.

After the garden was sufficiently wetted, and a few of the kids having been accidently drenched from leftover water, they set out to collect some fresh produce. As the kids huddled around the raised garden bed, their instructor advised them on which plants were ready to pick.

They spent the next fifteen minutes uncovering heads of lettuce and carefully picking basil leaves off the stem and proudly showed off their hard work. The fresh produce they harvested that morning was cleaned and sent home in hopes of incorporating into the family meals.

St. Paul'sLater in the summer ARCHS had the opportunity to visit St. Paul’s summer program, facilitated by Neighborhood Houses. That afternoon the kids were in the middle of a weeklong project repairing donated computers. Earlier in the week the youth stripped down each computer into its individual components, cleaned them and then pieced them back together replacing any damaged part. In this particular class session, the students were huddled around their newly refurbished machines patiently staring at blues screens while Windows 10 installed. At the end of the week their hard work would pay off as they each brought home the PC they cleaned and built ready to help them with future school work.

These students also had the opportunity to partake in a week long summer camp at Camp MoVaL in Union, MO. On the day ARCHS visited, the kids were battling the hot weather with some morning boating. While most patiently waited in the shade for their turn, groups in paddleboats or individual kayakers took turns paddling across the lake, being careful not to tip into the lake.

After their boating excursions they participated in an exercise on social biases and how to recognize stereotypes in their everyday lives. During the activity kids were challenged to confront both their own biases and those of their community. From there the kids ventured back into the heat to play a friendly game of capture the flag before lunch. As they divided into teams the coordinators rallied the kids by starting camp chants that everyone loudly echoed.

Green CenterARCHS also connected Gene Slay’s Girls & Boys Club with The Green Center in an effort to better connect kids with nature. The first day they toured the Green Center in University City discovering a variety of outdoor spaces including a wetland, woods, and prairie. The second day they visited Babler State Park and enjoyed hiking trails and observing wildlife. ARCHS is proud to have supported all of these programs this summer. Each provides youth with unique opportunities to enrich their summer while exploring new ideas and activities in preparation for the upcoming school year.

The state of Missouri provides several meal programs during the school year (National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program) that feed underserved students. Programs like these help households avoid the problems of food insecurity and inaccessibility to healthy foods. However, at the commencement of summer break the majority of these families are left with a large question mark about how to effectively feed their children. Without the aid programs, many are required to increase their allocation for monthly food spending, an unrealistic possibility for most relying on these programs.

Fortunately since 2011, the state of Missouri has been participating in a federally funded pilot program that insures these children are provided with access to healthy foods during the summer. The program SEBTC (Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer for Children) provides households, with eligible children, extra funds in the form of an EBT card, based off the current SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) system in Missouri, to purchase extra food.

ARCHS has, for the last 6 years, partnered with the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) and the State of Missouri in assisting in the facilitation of this program through the St. Louis Public School District and the Ferguson-Florissant School District. In addition to aiding participants with support of the system and friendly reminders of the programs expiration dates, ARCHS has created a 2017 Summer Meals Guide to aid families in finding healthy food options and farmers markets that accept EBT (and SEBTC) transactions.

ARCHS has seen steady growth in this program over the past 6 years. To this date SEBTC has served more than 24,369 children in the St. Louis area. In fact from 2015 - 2016 the number of participants increased by 61% to reach the 2016 yearly total of 8,897 children, with projections for 2017 being even greater. Overall, the program in these 2 school districts has seen an economic impact of $2.7 million of the available funds having been spent, averaging about $690,000 a year. These positive trends have allowed ARCHS to champion the results of this program at a federal level White House Event last January and to further advise local food programs during the summer months.

In addition to the overarching initiative of SEBTC, ARCHS has teamed up with several regional organizations to further assist families bridging the summer food gap. The most notable is Operation Food Search’s (OFS) support of ARCHS’ funded and supported summer camp at St. Francis Cabrini Academy. Every morning their fleet of brightly colored vans delivers the iconic Food for Good bins to the program site. Filled with meals for the children attending the summer camps, these bins insure the kids have a substantive meal packed with enough proper nutrients to help them enjoy their summer break. Along with OFS’s support of ARCHS program they sponsor a fleet of vans that provide meals to mobile sites around the city.

As the entrepreneurs, leaders, and workers of tomorrow, children are vital to our country’s growth, prosperity, and well-being. When children thrive, our nation thrives. That is why the Annie E. Casey Foundation has produced the KIDS COUNT® Data Bookevery year for nearly three decades: it provides an annual snapshot of how America’s children and families are faring in every state and across the nation.

The 2017 KIDS COUNT® Data Book focuses on key trends in child well-being over the last six years (roughly 2010-2015) – a period in which the country continued its economic recovery. These key trends are a measure of child well-being in the four domains most needed to thrive: economic well-being, education, health, and family and community.

The 2017 Data Book shows some steady improvements in economic well-being for Missouri’s children. More preschoolers are enrolled in Missouri schools and more of our 4th graders are proficient in reading. More Missouri children have health insurance and the number of teens affected by drug abuse decreased.

Keep in mind that while Missouri trends are based on overall numbers, the trends are likely different for specific subgroups (such as ethnic and racial minority families, military families). So targeted investments must continue in Missouri that support:

The geography of poverty for children in Missouri means that they are in poor families in very poor neighborhoods – a double burden. Being surrounded by poverty limits a child’s opportunity and is a catalyst for them to continue a cycle of poverty as they grow.

“Our role is to share reliable data and stories that reflect areas of success, as well as those areas the need enhanced focus,” said Bill Dent, Executive Director of Missouri Family and Community Trust (FACT). “We look forward to influencing the story of children – one of our state’s most important investments.”

Missouri Family and Community Trust (FACT) is a not-for-profit organization serving as the Annie E. Casey sponsored KIDS COUNT® organization in Missouri - Missouri KIDS COUNT®. ARCHS serves as FACT’s KIDS COUNT® representative in the St. Louis region. The Annie E. Casey Foundation invests in a network of KIDS COUNT® organizations across the country that promotes the Foundation’s annual Data Book.

ARCHS is awarding state-funded, no cost access into an IT e-learning system for Microsoft products to more than a dozen selected high schools from local, under-resourced school districts. These area high schools will receive online curriculum and industry-recognized certifications that assist students in developing digital skills ranging from fundamental technology to preparation for career/college roles in computer science.

In addition, ARCHS’ funding of the IT e-learning system will enable educators’ success by providing them professional development resources and train-the-trainer sessions needed to keep their technical skills current. Without ARCHS’ support, the high cost of Microsoft certification exams is often a barrier to students from low-income families, even if the high school can afford to purchase the student curriculum and educator resources/training.

ARCHS will track the use of resources, trainings, and number/types of certificates earned by students in order to identify any needed improvements during the two-year, $250,000 program that will begin August 2017.

State economists estimate Missouri has 5,000 open jobs requiring some form of Microsoft skills certification. The new state partnership between Microsoft Imagine Academy (MIA, formerly IT Academy), Missouri Department of Social Services, and federal TANF block grants is similar to other states that also have used MIA to deploy the high school program leading to in-demand occupations.

Locally, the partnership between ARCHS, Microsoft US Public Sector/Education – South Central Region, Northwest Council for Computer Education (NCCE), En Pointe Technologies, and area high schools/districts seeks to bridge the STEM skills gap between the region’s career/college-bound young adults, high demand STEM labor markets, and improved economic/social circumstances.